October 5

Our Mission Statement – The Package Brand

Above is my research and analysis of our audience and the key things that we want to keep in mind when creating our digipak. We also researched our competition and created our mission statement.

It is important to have an overview of the brand as we create each product for to promote our star. Each product needs to have a similar theme in order to link everything together and we need to aim everything at the same target audience who have the same ideaologies and interests.

September 28

Music Video Draft 3

Things that have changed:

  • we added more effects such as:
    • the rotation effect
    • the glitch effect/vr effect
    • the inverted glitch effect
    • more circles over shots of dancing
    • the pulse effect
    • the echo effect
  • made the flashback effect more obvious by changing the colour and adding a pulse
  • we have added multiple clips on top of each other to create split screens to add interest on screen
  • faster pace of edit – we are able to see more shots of her getting annoyed etc
  • zoomed into facial expressions to get the more intense shots
  • put the clips in chronological order so the sequencing makes more sense
  • slowed down the emerging from the black bath
  • added a VR effect on the montage of becoming the goth in order to create a more angsty atmosphere
  • zoomed in on high angle to create the intensity
  • made the reflection in the glasses fit better and is now more obvious to the audience

Comments about our video from our peers:

Targets for Improvement:

  • more close ups of hands moving
  • add transitions
  • zoom in on some clips to get more personal
  • add colour correction adjustment layer to make all clips look the same
  • make goth clips darker and more atmospheric to highlight the change in mood
September 23

Teacher Feedback – screen castify

Summary

  • play with effects and transitions to create more interest on screen
  • include more close up and extreme close up shots to create intensity
  • move the star so that she isn’t in the centre of the screen the whole time
  • use close ups of hands and arms to distract from the out of time dancing
  • more cuts between shots – some shots are too long
  • use effects 3 times
  • make sure sequencing is chronological – some doesn’t make sense
  • create jump cuts for interest

Targets:

  • add in more effects and ensure that they are in at least 3 times for the comfort of the audience
  • use more shots and angles – some are too long and the interest is lost
  • include more close up shots of hand movements and include movement through the frame
  • include some more obvious jump cuts
  • adapt the pace of edit to fit the tension in the frame
September 22

Specsavers Feedback

Earlier in the week we had some media experts from Specsavers come in and they gave us some really useful feedback. They said:

  • try to edit to the beat more
  • zoom in on some more clips to create some interest and change of shot
  • use effects to your advantage – you can always take things out but you’ll never know if you don’t try

They gave us some tips on how to do some interesting effects. One of the main ones they taught us was how to change the anchor point of a rotation. This was extremely useful as it allowed us to merge different shots in the background of the rotation as well as creating some interest in the shot.

We also had some experts from Digital Greenhouse come in and they also gave us some feedback on our video:

  • have a good variety of shots and angles
  • the narrative is obvious – the target audience will understand it
  • try to work in some more effects and don’t forget the rule of 3
  • include more close ups and extreme close ups to create intensity – e.g. zoom in on glasses, as it wasn’t obvious that there was someone dancing in them
  • don’t be afraid to have close ups of body parts or certain movements

They also taught us how to use colour correction throughout the whole piece. They said to find your darkest and lightest shots and adjust them to suit the rest of the video. Then apply an adjustment layer over the whole video to fix the whites and the shadows to get the correct levels of contrast, light and exposure. This is incredibly useful as it will save a lot of time, due to the fact that it will be one adjustment layer compared to one layer per shot, and it means that we don’t have to worry about getting the same levels and the perfect correction on every single clip.

September 21

“Music Video Draft 2”

What went well:

  • we got a wide variety of shots which helped us to complete and experiment successfully with our narrative
  • we have edited to the beat
  • when there is more tension in the video the pace of edit quickens to reflect the action

Targets:

  • add in more close ups from the narrative
  • experiment with different shots in the performance – a lot of them are the same
  • have the intensity with the main narrative star – close ups of eyes, hands, feet etc
  • cut out irrelevant stuff in the background of the shot – there are some bags in one of the shots
  • colour correct the whole piece
  • add in some more transitions and effects to add to the overall effect of the piece
  • try and make the start of the narrative more clear to the audience – flashback more obvious?
September 18

Shoot 2 Reflection (Narrative)

For our narrative, we conducted two shoots, both off site, one at Vale Castle and another at Imogen’s house and both of these shoots highlighted and tested us with a wide variety of different things. Overall I believe that our shoot was a success, as we were able to capture the energy and story that we wanted to have for narrative. We stuck to our storyboard and focused on what we wanted to film. The storyboard was useful in that it gave us a structure, meaning that we were able to have a set idea of what we had to have filmed.

However, even though the overall shoot was a success, some of the shots came out blurry which leaves us less footage to experiment with for the final product. With that being said the majority of the shots were successful and we decided to not re-shoot as we had enough which were of good quality. During editing, we have had to zoom in on some clips in order to crop out some bags in the background that we forgot to move but to also create our close ups to generate intensity. Luckily our location was able to provide good light due to the open top and thankfully the sun was out.

September 18

Design Skills 2

Whilst editing our narrative we have developed some new skills in Adobe Premier Pro.

The first is the Replicate tool which replicates the image on screen to the number of times that you input. We found this effective on our close up shot of the mouth saying ‘Just a couple of monsters’ as it emphasized our narrative that the society the girl was in was full of monsters that she was trying to escape from.

Another effect that was effective was the Brightness & Contrast and the Change Colour effect. To save time, we made this clip into a nested sequence. This meant that we could add effects in this small screen so that if we needed to delete effects it was easier to remove them, rather than going through all of our other clips. We used this effect to portray the flashback at the start of the video. To do this we selected the end mark that we wanted to image to look like, used a time stamp and put it at the end of the clip. The clip then faded out to white, helping create the effect of a flashback.

We also learnt how to use the Rotation tool. We created our mask with the opacity tool and then we created a time stamp for where we wanted the start position to be for our clip. We then created a second time stamp in which we changed the rotation so it rotated 3 times and placed this time stamp at the end of the clip. We also had to change the anchor point so that the image rotated around the face rather than at the feet. This created the effect of spiralling out of control or ‘down the rabbit hole’ to reinforce our flashback effect.

September 10

Video Narrative Story/shot sheets

An important part to planning our narrative shoot was to create a story board/ shot list. It helps you get all your ideas down onto a page and then you’re able to see what shots you need and it also helps ensure you have a variety of angles. It is crucial to have a structure when filming and this will help us when we go on our location shoot so we won’t waste any time.